


The Mistakes We've Made

by PyromanicSchizophrenic



Category: Video Blogging RPF, Youtube RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, characters in story are not as massive assholes as they appear, more like "characters transported to a fantasy au", no beta we die like men, of sorts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:47:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26690911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyromanicSchizophrenic/pseuds/PyromanicSchizophrenic
Summary: Sean wakes up in a grassy field, the sky a pale blue with not a cloud in sight and a sun brighter than he thinks he’s ever seen in his entire life. It’s almost like he’s in a world away from the pollution and emissions. All the colors are more vivid than he's used to, and his immediate thought is that he’s having a really weird dream.“Jack?” a voice behind him calls. He recognizes it, vaguely. He turns around and sees Ethan standing a ways away, at the crest of a grassy hill. Mark stands just behind him, but Sean can't see the looks on either of their faces.
Relationships: Mark Fischbach/Amy Nelson, Past Ethan Nestor/Original Character(s), Sean McLoughlin/Original Character(s)
Kudos: 9





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes:
> 
> I started this story a _long_ time ago. Like, before Ethan announced he and Mika were dating, right after Sean and Signe announced they'd broken up, _long_ time ago. By the time those developments had come around, I had grown so attached to this story and the way Sean and Ethan and Syd fit together, I couldn't bring myself to leave it. I do love both the boys' respective girlfriends and want to see them happy; but this is a fan fiction and I get to do whatever I want with it.
> 
> I also wanted to say that there's a lot of stuff that Sean doesn't know throughout the course of this story, and some of those things might affect the way you perceive some of the other characters. Just wait. I promise I'm not vilifying any of our favorite boys.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you all enjoy! I've worked really hard on this and I hope it shows!

It is not, Sean tells himself every time the subject is brought up, that he minds PJ trying to set him up. It's not even that he minds that he’s only trying to set him up with one girl. Sean likes Sydney well enough; she’s got a smile that takes up her whole face and a full-bodied laugh that fills whatever room she’s in. She’s pretty and kind and fierce, bright eyes and a bubbly personality. Sean knows, he swears he knows, that he could fall in love--head over heels in love, the kind of love in corny YA novels--if he’d only let himself. So it's not that he minds that PJ is trying to set him up, and he’s got absolutely nothing against Syd.

He just wishes PJ would stop trying to set him up with Ethan’s ex-girlfriend.

Sean isn’t the world’s biggest advocate for the “bro code,” or anything. He doesn't necessarily have any general objections to dating a friend’s ex, depending on how long ago they dated and for how long, as well as why they broke up in the first place. Someone a friend dated for three months back when they were sixteen isn’t going to be someone Sean views as off-limits (unless she like… murdered someone, or something). He wouldn’t even feel the need to ask if that friend would be okay with it; three months over a decade ago is nothing at all. But Syd and Ethan dated for something close to two years, and they only broke up just over two months ago. From what Sean understands, it was messy, preceded by shouting and fights that didn’t make sense, ending with two heartbroken individuals that were entirely unsure of where exactly it went wrong. He’s heard both sides of the story, and neither of them were quite willing to place the blame solely (or even primarily) on the other, but refusing to take it themselves. The last few weeks they were together could only be described as a trainwreck, and they're only just starting to talk to each other again, even if it's only in stilted and awkward texts.

Sean wouldn't mind PJ trying to set him and Syd up if the breakup hadn't been so recent, or at the very least if it had been cleaner.

“I'm not trying to set you up,” PJ tells Sean now, clearly seeing where Sean’s mind is. PJ says that each time, but there's no way he’s not, when he’s trying to convince Sean to let Syd stay at his place for a couple weeks while they film something for her channel, some music video that PJ agreed to direct, despite the fact that they lived in different countries. “But she needs someplace to stay, unless you want her to spend more money than what's fair on a hotel for two weeks.”

“And what's wrong with your place?” Sean asks, though he already knows. Syd wouldn’t complain, she never does, but she certainly wouldn't be comfortable sharing a space with a happy couple for an extended period of time, not if she’s still hurting. Even Sean, way back when he and Signe broke up, found it hard to be around Mark and Amy, Arin and Suzy. (Ethan and Syd.) His own breakup hadn't even been that rough, certainly not as rough as Syd’s and Ethan’s.

PJ fixes Sean with a look that tells the Irishman what he already knows: he’s grasping at straws, desperate for… what, exactly? An excuse not to have to deal with Syd? She’s his friend, too. Sean’s grateful she and Ethan aren't making him choose a side. Maybe that's what this is about, a perceived choice he doesn't even want to make.

Maybe he’s afraid that he won't be able to help himself. Maybe he’s afraid he’ll fall in love anyway, in spite of his best efforts.

“It'll give her a chance to teach you the choreography, anyway,” PJ says finally, even if they both know that's not the real issue.

“Waste of her time, to be honest,” Sean says, latching onto the chance to change the subject. “I'm shite at dancing.”

PJ shrugs. “Give it a chance,” he says. “She told me the dance isn’t that hard, and she’s a professional dance instructor. I'm sure you'll be fine.”

And just like that, Sean has to prepare for Syd to stay at his house for two weeks, with less than forty-eight hours to do so. He feels cheated, somehow, almost like PJ guilt-tripped him into agreeing. Possibly, he might have, but Sean doubts he meant anything bad by it. Those doubts might even help Sean forgive him, someday. Maybe.

* * *

_ Plane's landed. En route soon. _

Sean still isn't sure how the hell he managed to let PJ convince him to do this.

Actually, scratch that. Take it back further, Sean isn't sure how the hell he let  _ Syd _ convince him to do this; he doesn't know the song, doesn't care about the band, can't dance to save his life, and he doesn't feel like filming on the beach at daybreak in March is anything close to a good idea. Everything about what she's asking of him is adding up to what could have been,  _ should  _ have been, a simple, “No, thanks. Sorry.” He could have turned her offer down and resolutely stayed inside while his friends froze their asses off in the wee hours of the morning. Probably, he wouldn’t have even felt like the worst person in the world for all that long.

Somewhere in the midst of his frantic musings, he found himself in front of his computer, YouTube already pulled up, as it always is these days. He decides that now is as good a time as any to look up the song.

Syd does this thing on her channel, where she makes a music video for a song that doesn't already have one, recording a cover of the song in the process. She covers a lot of bases with them, stretching across genres and making the videos she feels her favorite songs deserve, and it all started with a Fall Out Boy cover she made to tell a story and to make a point to herself (Sean's heard the story about the video and everything it means, a late night after a charity stream on her end, something that left her drained and tired and needing a fresh pair of ears, someone who hadn't heard the story before). PJ had reached out months ago about a collaboration, and Syd had an idea ready and waiting for exactly that moment. A music video cover, for a song from an album with no videos at all. Weird and a little bit creepy, right up PJ's alley.

It's not Sean's kind of music. It feels more like a dramatic reading, like slam poetry recited over a piano than a proper song. It's soft and easy, but the words come through perfectly clear, and he can tell, plain as day, it's perfect for PJ.

He ends up, inexplicably (or maybe just inevitably) on a binge of Syd's cover videos, and he's halfway through one for a song called “Lifted” when his phone vibrates.

_ Outside. Come help with her bags like a proper gentleman. _

Not trying to set them up, Sean's  _ arse. _

He exits out of the window, not that Syd's going to be going into his recording room anyway to spot the incriminating evidence, and heads outside. Unsurprisingly, Syd doesn't even need help with her two bags: a bright orange suitcase and a backpack with a collage of Pokémon printed on it. She looks up at him and grins her face-splitting grin, and Sean can't help but smile back. Worried about nothing, that's what he's been doing. Being around Syd is easy, and he can hardly make a fool of himself in his own damn home. If he really can't get the hang of it before they go down to the beach in a week's time, then Sean's sure she has a backup plan in place.

And, at any rate, isn't making a fool of himself something Sean doesn't care about? Isn't it kind of what he's known for?

"Hi, Jack!" she says, setting the suitcase down on the ground and wrapping her arms around him, pressing close like always. Syd hugs everybody with a full-bodied embrace, as if every person she meets is a personal friend she's known her whole life. She pulls away after a moment, and up close, Sean can see bags under her eyes and the exhausted set of her shoulders. But she's still as bright-eyed as she always is, almost as if nothing can actually slow her down for long. "How've you been?"

Sean shrugs, picking the suitcase up for her--he came out here to help her with her luggage, apparently, so that's what he's going to do. "Pretty good," he tells her, waving to PJ as other man gets back into the car. Syd waves too, much more energetically. "How about you?"

Syd responds with a shrug of her own. "Okay," she says softly, and Sean winces internally. Bright eyes and broad grin, maybe, but that doesn't mean she's going to be the same as she was before. "Been better," she continues, and Sean opens his mouth to apologize, but she adds, "Been worse," before he can.

Sean doesn't know what to say to that, but Syd doesn't seem to mind. He opens the door to let her into the house, and she walks in, toeing her shoes off almost as soon as she's through the door. He's never been entirely clear if it's an "Americans don't wear shoes indoors" thing or a "Syd hates shoes and will take them off at the soonest available opportunity" thing.

"I'll show you to the guest room," Sean says, moving around her and into the hall. He doesn't check to make sure she's following; the house isn't exactly big enough to get lost in, and there's nothing interesting enough to distract Syd for the amount of time it would take for Sean to disappear completely.

The guest room isn’t anything special, just a bed, dresser, and a nightstand, but it’s enough that Syd won’t be wanting for anything in the couple weeks she’s here. Sean doesn’t see a point in decorating a guest bedroom, since there’s never any way to know who will be staying in there, and all sorts of people like all sorts of things. It’s better to keep it dull and empty than to make some guests uncomfortable just for the sake of getting his ma off his back (“The room’s so bare, nobody’ll want t’ stay that long!”).

Syd doesn’t seem to mind, at any rate, setting her bookbag on the bed and shrugging out of her coat. She grins at Sean as he sets the suitcase by the door, floundering for something to say next. He should probably do something about dinner, not that his kitchen’s well stocked.

“Thanks for letting me stay on such short notice,” Syd says, collapsing backwards. Sean thinks her head is now hanging off the side of the bed he can’t see. “I was supposed to stay with PJ and Sophie, but Peej said something came up.”

Of course he did.

“It’s no problem,” Sean assures her, still standing awkwardly in the doorway. “’It’s not like I keep the place filthy or anything like that.”

The truth is, he’d had to spend the last couple days tidying up. It’s not like he lives in squalor or anything like that; he puts his dirty dishes in the sink and he keeps most of his clothes in a hamper, but he also tends to leave scraps of paper and loose pens lying around. He doesn’t even know where they all come from, it’s not like he does a lot of physical writing or anything. It’s just that he knows Syd well enough to know that she’d feel bad if she thought he had to go to any length of trouble for her benefit.

She sends him a thumbs up in response to his assurances, before letting her arm flop back down to her side.

“Anyway, I was thinking of just ordering a pizza for dinner,” Sean says, mainly because he doesn’t have enough food in his kitchen to make an actual meal. He needs to do some grocery shopping, but he didn’t think to do that before Syd arrived. "Any preferences?"

"No fucking pineapple," she says, and Sean refrains from making some ridiculous comment to kickstart an arbitrary argument about pizza toppings.

"So two different pizzas, got it."

* * *

"So," Syd straightens up, after clearing a large space in the center of Sean's living room, "do you have any dance experience at all?"

"I filmed those pole dancing videos with Mark while I was in LA," Sean answers, clicking his fingers and pointing at her.

Syd lets out a breath of air, looking down and putting her hands on her hips. "That's…That's okay," she says, straightening up. She claps her hands together once. "I can work with this." She smiles up at him, blindingly bright. "Let's stretch out, first."

She leads him in a few stretches, explaining where Sean's meant to feel each one. It leaves him feeling kind of weird, loose in a way that he's not used to. It takes about twenty minutes before she declares him ready.

"Alright, so," she says, bending over backwards far enough that Sean thinks she might fall over, "have you listened to the song yet?"

Sean flashes back to the day before. He nods.

"And what did you think?" She stands back up.

Sean can't tell if she wants his opinion on the song itself, or if she wants to know what he thinks he's going to be doing, what role he thinks he's taking in all of this. "I think it's interesting," he settles on finally. "Definitely PJ's cup of tea."

"Right?" Syd looks happy with his assessment. "Anyway, so there's that part of the song where the narrator says he sees that spaceship, right? And there's a voice that says, 'follow me instead.' I was thinking, you could be that voice, the temptation to leave the line the narrator's been in day in, day out. Understand?"

Sean understands the concept well enough, even if he doesn't understand why she chose him, or how that translates to him trying to dance. He nods, though, instead of questioning any of that. He figures that he's already committed, knowing why isn't going to help him. He probably should have asked her why him when she first asked.

"Alright," she says, stepping close to him. "Any objections to me getting slightly handsy to adjust your position?" 

"Be my guest," Sean offers. It's really starting to get difficult to believe that PJ has no intention of setting them up, although he doubts that he knew about this bit.

Syd grins, and Sean's pretty sure that it's not meant to be as sharklike as it looks. She grabs him by the arms and shifts him over about three steps to the left, so he's standing dead center of the living room. "So there won't be marks on the ground," she explains, "because it's a beach and that might be difficult, but we're starting 'center stage'," she makes finger quotes around the last two words, "which is to say the center of the camera's frame. I'm not gonna hound you on marks for the whole thing, just because hitting exact marks in this style of dance is difficult enough when you do have experience, which you do not." That sounded fair. "So, you're gonna start with your feet slightly more than shoulder width apart," she says, nudging Sean's feet apart with her own foot. "And then your body turned towards stage left."

"So...my left?" Sean asks, as she twists his torso so that his feet are kept facing his couch, but his shoulders are facing the wall.

"Well, yeah," she agrees. "But if your back's to the camera, this is still stage left, even if it's your right."

"Oh, Jesus," Sean mutters.

Syd grins at him again. "You'll do fine!" She adjust his arms, then walks over to the left, just out of his reach. "Ready?"

He's pretty sure the answer's no. He nods anyway.

It's hard. Syd's patient, going slow and adjusting his body over and over, giving him kind smiles and telling him how great he's doing. They go for almost two hours, and Sean's sweating all over, even though he's not doing nearly as much as Syd. He doesn't feel like he's made any progress, and he's almost entirely certain that when they come back to this tomorrow, he won't remember any of it.

"Let's call it for the day," Syd declares, barely winded. "You did well!"

"Don't lie to me," Sean huffs, doubling over. "That was terrible."

"Oh, no, believe me," she says, sitting down on the couch, which Sean can't wait to move back to its original spot, if only because that means that this hell will be done with. "I've seen terrible. Inexperienced and struggling with choreography is not the same thing as talentless and unmotivated."

"Oh God, please tell me that you tell your students that they're talentless," Sean says, straightening up and joining her on the couch. " _ Please _ ."

"Of course I don't," Syd says, as if the idea is ridiculous. "Calling someone talentless isn't constructive. I say it to the other instructors."

Sean laughs, and tries not to think about how lonely he's going to be once Syd goes home.

* * *

About a week and a half later finds Sean chugging coffee and freezing his ass off on the beach at four in the morning. Syd's beside him, talking animatedly to PJ about positions and camera angles. Most of it goes right over Sean's head, less because he doesn't understand filmmaking (he does) and more because he's been awake for too long. What doesn't go over his head is when he hears PJ say, "Water's not quite as cold as I thought it'd be."

"Oh, that's good," Syd says, taking a sip of her own coffee. "Although we do still have a plan B."

PJ waves his hand dismissively. "I think this'll be fine. More authentic."

"Okay, but if anyone gets sick, I am  _ not  _ taking the blame," Syd warns. "I had a plan B, which does not involve jumping into the ocean in March."

"We're doing what now?" Sean asks. He was not told that he was taking a swim in this weather.

"Oh, no, not you," Syd says, putting a hand on his shoulder. "You're doing exactly what we've practiced and nothing else, don't worry. Everyone else is walking into the ocean, it's fine!" She smiles up at him, bright, infectious. Calming.

Still, though, Sean isn't going to let go of the issue so quickly. "Can I ask why everyone's walking off into the ocean in the middle of March?"

Syd shrugs. "It's PJ's vision. I was cool with a green screen and some cute animations."

PJ looks affronted. "This was your idea!"

"Not in the middle of March, it wasn't!" Syd argues. "I said, depending on when we end up shooting. If we were here in June or July, then yeah. Sure, we can line up our friends and send them into the ocean. Once we settled on this time of year, I offered up an alternative where nobody gets a cold and spends the next couple weeks angry at both of us."

Sean spares a glance over to the other clusters of people. He recognizes most of them, even if only vaguely. A lot of them are more PJ's friends than his own, people PJ always calls on for his films. it makes Sean wonder, again, why he's the one that got chosen to dance with Syd. Why was he singled out, why's he the only one doing something special?

"Anyway," PJ says, pulling Sean away from his train of thought. "Which did you want to film first, this bit," he gestures to the two of them, "or the part where all our friends walk into the freezing ocean and hate us for the foreseeable future?"

"We'll do the dance first," Syd decides. "If the light changes during the line, it's fine. I want the illusion that we've been marching for a while."

PJ nods. "I'll get the equipment set up over there, then."

"Can I ask why I'm the one who's got to dance?"

Syd looks up at him and smiles. "PJ suggested it." Of fucking course he did. "But I was thinking about asking you to do it, anyway. I had this idea forever ago, way before I even became a YouTuber, back when you had green hair. And in my head, you were the alien in the spaceship."

"This was before you'd even met PJ?" Sean can't believe that Syd's been sitting on a KickthePJ collaboration for that long, longer than that collaboration's even been in the cards.

"I've admired him for an incredibly long time," she says, matter-of-fact. "And I really felt like this song suited his aesthetic. Anyway, even after you went back to your natural hair color, the visual kinda stuck." She shrugs. "Why'd you agree, if you were so sure you'd be terrible at it?"

_ Because I can't say no to you, apparently. _ "Beats the alternative, which is apparently running into the ocean."

Syd rolls her eyes. She grabs him by the hand and drags him toward where PJ's finishing setting up. 

"Hey, do you want us to get into our starting positions so you can make sure we're both in frame?"

"Yes, actually," PJ agrees. "We can set up how wide the shot's meant to be, as well."

Syd nods before dragging Sean over to a stretch of beach that seems to have been set aside for the two of them, positioning him right in front of the tripod that PJ must have set up earlier. "You remember any of the dance?" she asks, tapping him on the shoulder.

"Parts," Sean says. "Not all." Really, it's much less complicated than he'd thought it would be, with a wide margin of error on his part. So long as he remembers where to put his feet, Syd will be able to do the rest. He just can't quite remember all the places he's supposed to put his feet.

"Could be worse." She grins up at him before stepping away, standing a few feet away and waving to let PJ know that she's ready for him to adjust the camera.

Looking around, Sean realizes that even though he doesn't have much of a clue as to what he's doing, he's glad that he agreed. He watches Syd for a moment, waving excitedly at different people and bouncing as she talks to whoever comes over. Nobody seems too upset about the fact that they're expected to walk into the ocean on a brisk spring morning, surprisingly.

"Alright, Jack?"

Sean starts, turning to his right to see Jack Howard standing there, looking much more awake than he has any right to.

"Oh, yeah," he answers, even though he has to fight through a yawn to say it.

"Bit tired?" Jack guesses with a grin. 

"Yeah," Sean agrees, "but at least I get to stay on dry land the entire time."

Jack scoffs. "Alright, rub it in." He doesn't look like he actually minds too much, though. "It'll look good, though. At least, that's what PJ says."

"Oh, obviously you can trust PJ," Sean says.

"Oh, totally," Syd says, coming up behind Sean. "But I told him that if everyone gets sick it's not my fault."

"It's your video, though, innit?" Jack points out. "So, it sort of is."

"No," Syd objects. "Absolutely not. I had an alternative plan in case we ended up doing this while it was cold, and it's cold, and PJ said we're gonna march y'all into the ocean anyway. Not my fault."

Jack opens his mouth to reply, but PJ calls out, "Jack Howard! Get out of my shot!"

It takes about an hour and a half to film, but Sean doesn't know that they get that much usable footage out of it. He forgets about a third of the routine, and he probably looks graceless as fuck. Syd grins at him as they finish, though, tells him he's done a good job. He doesn't call her on the lie.

Sean doesn't pay too much attention to the line, mainly because he doesn't see a reason to. He sits on the ground next to PJ, just far enough from the camera that they could talk without being picked up by the camera's mic. It's mostly courtesy, since Syd's explained that the audio is being recorded separately because it's a music video.

They don't talk much, though. PJ's too busy calling for restarts and changes in positions, talking to Sophie behind the camera about whether it looks good or if they need to reshoot. Sean already feels for everyone who's gone into the water. There've been a lot of exclamations of, "It's fucking freezing!" already, and Sean's glad that he's not involved in this part.

"We'll do close ups tomorrow," PJ explains to him, when Sean asks why people keep moving into the back of the line, even though they're already soaked through. "This shot's wide enough that it shouldn't be obvious that we're just cycling through. We wanted the line to look longer than it is."

"Oh, so it's two days people are walking into the ocean."

PJ laughs. "Why are  _ you  _ so caught up on this?" he asks. "You don't have to do it!"

"It just blows my mind that they agreed to it," Sean says truthfully. "I swear, it's like Syd's got some magical ability to convince anybody to do anything she wants." He glances over when PJ doesn't respond immediately. PJ's watching him, and Sean knows exactly what he's thinking. "Don't start."

PJ just shakes his head at him. "The only person who told Syd they'd do something that they don't necessarily want to do was you," he says. "I talked to everyone else."

"It's not that I didn't want to," Sean argues. "It's just that I don't understand why she chose me." He looks over to PJ. "But apparently it was your suggestion."

PJ shrugs. "I wanted you to be in the video, but I didn't think you'd be willing to waltz into the ocean."

Sean sighs. "You really think I don't notice what you're doing?" he asks.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," PJ says, before he calls out something about resetting, effectively ending the conversation.

They keep going until the sun is high enough in the sky that it no longer constitutes as 'dawn' and is now, officially, 'morning.' Sean wants nothing more than to go back to sleep. But Syd's chattering excitedly about how much they got done, they can  _ totally  _ finish up tomorrow, Jack you did  _ so  _ good!

"Stop lying to me, I was passable at best," Sean mutters, looking around and debating stopping in at a coffee shop for some more caffeine.

"Well, considering you didn't even think that you were going to get that far, I'd say it was fantastic," Syd points out. "Besides, I'd go so far as to say you might have even been…" she leans in close and lowers her voice, " _ okay _ ."

"Blasphemy," Sean says, but he can't help the grin breaking out over his face. "No way was I anywhere near okay."

"Don't argue with me," Syd says. "I'm a dance instructor, I know what I'm about." She pauses, looking around. "Are you hungry? Because I'm starving and this place looks good!" She points at a diner a couple doors down from where they are, advertising fresh brewed coffee and a special on eggs and bacon. Sean gets convinced by the coffee and the grin on Syd's face.

* * *

The next morning moves smoothly and quickly. As it turns out, Syd signs off on everything she and Sean did yesterday, or at least enough that they don't have to reshoot any of it. They spread out the shots so that everyone's walking into the ocean with the sky at different shades, so there's a lot of downtime where everybody just mills around and talks to each other.

About half of the group assembled are wrapped up in towels and blankets, warming up after their foray into the ocean. Sean's in the middle of a conversation with Brad Smith and Emma Blackery when Brad says, in a total offhanded tone of voice, "Hey, so when did you and Syd start dating?" and Sean sort of...blanks.

As far as he's aware, nothing about the way he and Syd have been interacting the past couple days would indicate that they're  _ together _ , especially considering that Sean doesn't  _ want  _ to be dating Syd. Sure, she's kind of been clinging to him, but that's just who Syd is. She's a tactile person who will hug literally anybody who doesn't shove her off. And they only arrive together because she's staying at his place, which is only happening because PJ guilted Sean into it.

"We aren't," he says belatedly, remembering that he's in a conversation.

Brad and Emma don't look like they believe him. "I thought she was staying at your place?"

"Well, yeah, but..." Sean's not sure why he's getting so flustered. "I mean, she's been here close to two weeks, and most of it's been spent teaching me the dance from yesterday. I wasn't gonna let her pay for two weeks in a hotel when she was gonna be at my place most of it anyway. And it was PJ's idea, anyway."

"Oh, God, PJ was right," Brad says, like he can't believe how dumb Sean is.

"Right about...what?"

"Don't worry about it," Emma cuts in, smacking Brad in the chest. "Although, if I may, can I ask  _ why  _ you aren't dating her yet?"

_ Yet? _

"Yet?" Sean repeats. "What do you mean,  _ yet? _ "

Emma and Brad are gaping at him. "Is this about Ethan?" Brad asks, after a moment. "Because I don't think he should have anything to do with you and Syd, you know?"

"I—" Sean's floundering, he can tell. But he can't figure out how to string together the words to explain himself. Not that he needs to, but every second he spends in open-mouthed silence is a second that fucking solidifies Brad and Emma's point. "Can't I just not be interested and end it at that?"

"Sure," Brad allows. "But you seem pretty fucking interested."

PJ comes up then, saving Sean from having to answer, and Sean thinks maybe he should have just stayed home. Syd had given him that out, since he didn't have to do anything today and he spent so much of yesterday complaining about the cold and the early hour.  _ Why hadn't he stayed home _ ?

"Jack?" PJ's looking at him weird, of course he is. 

"This is all your fault," Sean says, before he walks away and sits near Sophie and the camera. He knows it's a bad choice, since PJ's going to be sitting there too, but the alternatives are either sitting off to the side like an antisocial weirdo, or storming off and going home. Both of those would a) make Brad and Emma think that they were right, and b) lead to Syd asking questions. Sean isn't going to deal with that exchange— "PJ's been trying to set us up and I only just realized that it might be because I've got an actual crush on you and not because he's being totally weird," sounds bad on a lot of different levels, and also he might have to explain that he's been avoiding even the slightest notion of asking her out, and why.

They film until the sky turns pink, at which point PJ calls a wrap and everybody cheers.

"I feel bad," Syd announces, "because all of you took a swim in the ocean in the early morning in March for one of my videos, and I didn't do that. So." She takes off her coat and hands it to PJ, then toes off her shoes. The entire group assembled stares in shock as she runs waist deep into the water and shouts, "Holy fuck, it's cold!" before running back to the shore. "Oh, fuck, that was cold! I regret that so much!"

"Why would you do that?" Sean asks when she meets back up with him and PJ, taking her coat back and wrapping it around herself.

"Were you not listening?" she asks, pressing close to him. "I felt bad. Now, share your body heat. I'm very cold."

"I feel like that's entirely your fault," PJ points out, but he hands Syd a spare blanket anyway. "So I won't take any blame if you get sick."

Sean helps adjust the blanket around her shoulders, then wraps his arms around her. He actively avoids looking at Brad, or Emma, or PJ, or even Sophie, who has to be in on PJ's whole thing.

* * *

It's much later, eating Chinese takeout and watching some stupid movie on Netflix, that Sean realizes that he might be in deeper than he anticipated, and was certainly in deeper than he wanted. Syd's got her feet propped up on his lap,wearing a Reptar onesie and a pair of Nightmare Before Christmas slipper socks and making dry comments about the characters' choices.

She leaves in two days.

She leaves in two days, and Sean, for the first time, thinks it's entirely too soon. He's enjoyed the past couple weeks, sure. Of course he has. It's nice to not be alone, it's nice to have someone to laugh at his jokes and give insight on his videos that aren't gameplay. He had fun with the collaborations that they filmed and, yes, he had fun on the beach. But he had hardly been prepared for her visit, and he's spent the entire time walking on eggshells and actively avoiding thinking about her as anything other than  _ friend  _ (or Ethan's ex; he's spent a lot of time thinking of her as Ethan's ex). Now that the floodgates on those thoughts have opened, he realizes how much he likes having her here.

"This movie sucks," Syd says, setting her empty carton on the coffee table. "I love it."

"It's certainly something," Sean agrees.

Once the movie ends, they clean up the empty cartons and put the leftovers in the fridge. Sean has a question, something that's been niggling at him for a while. He's just not sure if it's a good idea to ask. Syd looks up at him. "Something on your mind?"

Sean takes a deep breath, but he decides to bite the bullet. "Can I ask why you and Ethan broke up?"

Syd sighs, sits down at the table. "It's..."

"You don't have to answer," Sean backtracks. "Not if you don't want to."

"No, it's fine," she says. "I just, I don't actually know? Like, we were doing really well, and then...we weren't." It sounds familiar enough to what happened with Sean and Signe, but it feels like there's something that she's leaving out. Not that Sean's going to press—it's her prerogative not to tell him everything. "I just felt like...almost like he wasn't putting in the effort anymore, and I know that it's on both parties to keep the relationship working but it was like everything I tried to do just seemed to blow up in my face. I don't know what I was doing wrong."

Sean wants to comfort her, to tell her it wasn't necessarily anything she did, but it's incredibly out of character for Ethan to pick fights for absolutely no reason. Not to mention how out of step it would be for Sean to imply that Ethan was in any way emotionally abusing Syd. He wouldn't have done that; every second Sean spent with them while he was in LA, they were the absolute epitome of a healthy relationship. It really does sound like something went wrong somewhere, but it's impossible to tell what or where.

"At least you're talking again," Sean offers. "It sucks to lose a friend like that."

Syd nods. "Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And I'm glad none of our mutual friends chose one or the other, too. Because, unsurprisingly, after almost two years, we had a lot of those, and it would have sucked to lose all of them, too."

"You wouldn't have lost all your friends," Sean points out. He doesn't know if he means that he himself would have stuck with her, but there are a lot of people that were closer to her than to Ethan. "But it's weird, because I've never had two friends break up and not feel compelled to choose one over the other, you know?"

Syd nods. "I knew that once things with me and Ethan calmed down, I'd want to try to at least be able to...I don't know, coexist? Like, next time Mark does one of his weird sketch things, me and Ethan could both help without being at each other's throats. And it'd be entirely pointless if me and Mark stopped talking, wouldn't it?"

The problem with this conversation is that it doesn't give Sean any kind of clarity. He's thinking about it, even after Syd says good night and goes to her room. Syd and Ethan were doing everything right; they communicated, they took the time to let the anger burn out before they talked about what had pissed them off, they did everything to try not to piss each other off that point in the first place, and they loved each other to boot. There had to be a catalyst  _ somewhere _ , even if neither of them knew what it was.

And, really, that's why Sean's been so opposed to PJ's attempts to set them up. That's why Sean doesn't want to pursue anything with Syd,  _ that's  _ why Sean's been trying to bury this fucking crush. Because  _ something  _ went wrong. And maybe it's something that went wrong on Ethan's end, whatever apparently changed his attitude so drastically, but Sean doesn't know. He won't know, not until they figure it out  _ and  _ decide to share with him.

He almost wishes he hadn't asked.

Sean's too keyed up to sleep, now. He knows this. So, he does what he always does when he can't sleep. He records.

He records until his vision starts to swim, because he's been up for so long. He wants to try to keep going, but he knows a fruitless endeavor when he sees one, and he's walked his character off a cliff at least five times, and he can't even remember what game he's playing. He shuts everything down and collapses into his bed, but his mind's still racing even when he can't keep his eyes open. He doesn't know what time he ends up falling asleep, but it's probably much later than he'd have liked.

The first thing he does when he wakes up is take a shower. He regrets it as soon as the spray wakes him up more fully, and his mind immediately picks up where it left off last night. He's gonna kill PJ next time he sees him, and then he'll kill Brad, too. Not Emma, because she's not the one who's been trying to set them up, and she's not the one who asked  _ 'So how long have you been dating? _ ' She did ask why they weren't dating  _ yet _ , but Sean can forgive that. Probably. If he's feeling generous.

Syd's in the kitchen, slicing up an apple and putting the pieces in a bowl. She grins at him when he walks in, and his heart skips a beat. He's already in so fucking deep now that he's not in denial and it fucking  _ sucks _ . "Good morning!"

Sean resists the urge to say something stupid, like  _ what's so good about it _ , since then he'd have to explain what's got him in such a shitty mood. He knows she'd let him get away with simply saying that he didn't get much sleep last night, but it would feel weirdly like lying, and Sean can't do that to her.

"Any idea what you wanna do with your last day here?" he asks instead, grabbing a bowl so he can pour himself some cereal. 

Syd shrugs. "I dunno. Brighton's not exactly one of those cities with a bunch of internationally known landmarks, you know?"

"We've got some fantastic shops," Sean suggests. "If you wanna just walk around and look in at some of them."

"Works for me."

* * *

Neither of them buy much of anything, although Syd does have a few new t-shirts and a new hoodie that she really doesn't need, living in LA. She was really excited to see it, though, and Sean's trying not to think too hard about what that excitement did to his heart. They ate while they were out, so when they get back to Sean's place, Syd just pouts and says, "I should probably pack, shouldn't I?"

"Probably a good idea," Sean agrees. Her flight home's an early one, and PJ's coming by to pick her up at about five the next morning. "I can keep you company?"

"Oh, God, please. My cat was the only one keeping me company while I was packing to come out here, and all she did was sit in the suitcase."

"She wanted to come with you," he says with a laugh.

"I'm pretty sure smuggling a cat across country lines in a suitcase is illegal," she points out. "At the very least it's animal cruelty, and Truffles would be, you know, dead, and that's not ideal."

They continue on like that, in some fashion for a while. It's easy, Sean thinks, to avoid thinking about her  _ like that _ , if they keep the conversation light and mundane. Sure, she laughs easy and smiles often, and he feels like it should mean less when it happens but it doesn't, still make his heart stutter every time, but he can ignore it. He can ignore the pangs in his chest when he thinks about the fact that she's leaving tomorrow, probably before he even wakes up. Ignores that he wishes she'd stay, because he doesn't want to go back to the house being so empty.

He can almost ignore how hard he's fallen in just a couple days, can almost ignore that it means he has to have fallen well before that point but has been in denial the entire time.

Or maybe he can't ignore any of it, but denial had gotten him far.

So instead of acknowledging any of that, he makes his jokes and laughs at hers. Listens to her telling him about a different collab she filmed with PJ three days into her visit, where they played some nonsense card game that she didn't understand at all but enjoyed playing.

"I'm gonna miss you," she says, a bit suddenly, as she sets aside the same sweatpants she was wearing when she arrived. "Because I know that I said that nobody chose me or Ethan, but it's still weird spending time with any of our friends out there. They all knew him first, I know they'd have chosen him if we'd made them. It's awkward hanging out with them knowing that, and I think they know that too." Sean doesn't know what to say. He'd known Ethan before he'd known Syd, too, but he honestly couldn't say who he'd have chosen. In the past, he'd always panicked and ultimately lost contact with both parties, but he's not sure he could have handled that. "It just gets really lonely. And he's the one that moved out, so I'm alone in an apartment made for two people. It's been rough."

Sean takes a deep breath. "At risk of sounding self centered and making this all about me, I do know what you mean."

"Fuck, yeah," Syd says softly. "You and Signe dated for longer than me and Ethan did by about a year, right?"

Sean nods. "Something like that. House still feels too big, if I'm being honest." He moves a little closer to her, hoping it comes off more comforting than...just a desire to be closer. Maybe he can construe it as seeking comfort, if she asks. She won't; she never does. "It does get a little easier, if that helps."

"Yeah," Syd huffs. "Everything gets easier, eventually." She stuffs her socks into the gaps between the clothes in her suitcase, then closes it and zips it up.

"I should let you sleep," Sean says, and already he's mourning the loss of another person in his home.

"Probably," Syd agrees. "Or I could embarrass you on camera by kicking your ass at Mario Party."

"Oh, it's on!"

* * *

Sean and Syd stay awake until PJ comes to pick her up, because they play like three rounds of Mario Party and a few rounds of Mario Kart and end up awake until three in the morning, and two hours isn't really worth it for Syd to go to bed. Sean's keeping her company because he's a nice person, and not at all because he's wringing every second of time with her that he can. They end up watching another shitty movie on Netflix, with a bowl of popcorn between them.

PJ shows up five minutes early, and somehow, despite knowing and acknowledging it this whole time, it hits Sean like a freight train just how alone he's about to be left again. He doesn't want her to leave, but has no way to get her to stay. He hugs her tight, wishing he didn't have to let go.

"Keep in touch," she says. "And thanks for letting me stay. I appreciate it."

"I will," Sean promises. "And it was no problem. I had fun!"

He ignores PJ's wink as he and Syd leave.

* * *

It's a little over a month later when Sean goes to bed feeling a bit...off. He'd been recording some indie co-op game with Syd and Robyn for a couple hours, and then stayed on and talked with Syd for almost an hour after Robyn logged off.

He almost, but not quite, feels sick. Something like dizzy, like something’s not quite right. Everything's off-kilter, but Sean can't work out quite why. It's almost like he's drunk, or drugged, but he hasn't been drinking and he doesn't do drugs, so it can't be either of those things. He goes to bed, hoping he can just sleep it off.

Everything's even weirder when he wakes up.

  
  



	2. Press On just a Little Bit Farther

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sean wakes up somewhere strange. Somehow, he feels like the only one who's lost.

Sean wakes up groggy and disoriented, the sun shining bright behind his eyelids. He knows he’s got this unfortunate habit of sleeping in the daytime, but he doesn’t think his curtains and blinds have ever been so unsuccessful at keeping out the sun before. That’s about when he realizes two things: he’s not in his bed, and he can hear hushed voices a distance away. He sits upright so fast that he almost falls back over, his head pounding. It’s almost like he’s got a hangover, but he knows that he didn’t get drunk last night, even if he did feel like it when he went to bed. He finally opens his eyes, but can’t find the source of the whispered conversation.

He’s in a grassy field, the sky a pale blue with not a cloud in sight and a sun brighter than he thinks he’s ever seen in his entire life. It’s almost like he’s in a world away from the pollution and emissions. All the colors are more vivid than he's used to, and his immediate thought is that he’s having a really weird dream.

“Jack?” a voice behind him calls. He recognizes it, vaguely. He turns around and sees Ethan standing a ways away, at the crest of a grassy hill. Mark stands just behind him, but Sean can't see the looks on either of their faces.

The two suddenly start running down the hill, coming to stand beside Sean before he can gather his wits about him enough to form the words required to ask what’s happening, where they are. They don’t look as confused as Sean feels, which seems incredibly unfair. In fact, they don’t look even remotely confused at all. Concerned, certainly, and a little bit frightened, but there are no signs of the confused terror Sean feels roiling in his gut.

“Are you okay?” Mark asks softly, and Sean realizes that he's been staring at the two of them for too long and he hasn't said anything at all. 

“Where are we?” Sean asks softly. He sounds like a lost child and he hates it.

Mark and Ethan exchange a weighted look, like they know the answer, but don't know if they should let him in on the secret.

“Don’t worry about that right now,” Mark says, as Ethan looks beyond Sean and into the horizon. “We'll explain everything soon, I promise. But it's going to be dark soon, and we’ve still got half a day's walk.”

None of that makes any sense to Sean. He doesn't know if he can form the words to ask for a clarification. 

“Do you think anybody else came?” Ethan asks, as Mark gently turns Sean around and starts leading him across the field. There’s something else unspoken in Ethan's question, but Sean doesn't know enough about the situation to be able to tell what that something may be.

Mark, though, seems to know exactly what Ethan means. “I'm sure they're in our path like Jack was, or they'll be waiting for us at Central.”

“Central?” Sean asks, before he can stop himself. “Central what? Have you--” He stops, scrutinizes Mark as he moves ahead a couple steps. “Have you been here  _ before _ ?”

Mark sighs and looks behind Sean at Ethan again, and that more than anything clicks all the pieces into place. Of  _ course _ they've been here before--either many times or for one extremely long time. They know exactly where they're going, possibly somehow even exactly where they are, something that marks this stretch of hills and field as different from a different stretch of hills and field. Finally, Ethan speaks up. 

“Yes. But we have to get moving. You-- _ we _ don't want to be out here for too long after the sun goes down. We promise that we'll explain once we get to shelter. Okay?”

Sean looks back and forth between his two friends, unsure of how they could possibly have any idea which way is the right way but knowing that he doesn’t have much choice but to trust that they do. “Swear?”

Mark nods. “We'll explain absolutely everything,” he assures Sean. “So start making a list of questions, okay? We will answer every single one.”

Sean doesn’t think he needed to be given permission to start keeping a list of things he wanted to know, since he was already doing that anyway. But he just nods and starts following Mark again, Ethan just barely behind him. 

They walk for what must be hours, the sun slowly descending in the sky until Sean realizes that they've been approaching a forest, the sun disappearing behind the trees.

“We're almost there,” Mark says, and it'd be reassuring if Sean couldn't see Ethan out of the corner of his eye, looking for all the world like he’d rather be doing anything but going into the dark woods.

Ethan comes up on Mark's other side and whispers, soft enough that Sean thinks he isn’t meant to hear, “There’s no moon tonight.”

“We're almost there,” Mark says again, firmer. “We'll be alright.” Sean's listening closer, though, and he can hear the strain in his friend's voice. Dark woods are dangerous, even back home where everything makes sense, and Ethan's comment about the moon means something. Probably something bad. Sean trusts Mark, would even if he didn't feel like he has no choice. But it feels too much like Mark's hiding how dangerous those woods really are. 

“Maybe we should just, I don’t know, set up camp right here?” Sean suggests. “And go into the dark, scary woods in the morning when maybe they ain't so dark and scary?”

“That's…” Ethan looks to Mark helplessly. 

“We don’t want to stay out in the open right now,” Mark says soothingly. “And we really don’t want to spend the night in the woods, even just inside where we can still see the moor. We just have to keep going. Half an hour, tops. Scout's honor.”

Sean hates it, because he’s pretty sure Mark knows what he’s talking about, but also, the idea that staying just inside the treeline is somehow more dangerous than venturing deeper into the dark forest seems wrong, somehow. He nods anyway. “Alright. But if I end up like Leonardo DiCaprio in the Revenant I'm gonna haunt your ass.”

“He didn’t die in that movie,” Ethan reminds him, as they walk into the trees. There’s no path, and Sean can’t see the ground anyway. Almost immediately, he’s tripping over tree roots and loose rocks and whatever else is littering the forest floor. Mark and Ethan, somehow, seem to know exactly where almost every single trip hazard is and are avoiding them entirely. It's unfair, especially the first time Sean falls onto the ground. He thinks he might have torn his jeans, and his left ankle feels tender.

“Fuck,” he mutters, hauling himself back up to his feet. Mark and Ethan are a few steps ahead of him, but they’re looking back at him, waiting for him to catch up. He stumbles again when he puts weight on his left foot and his ankle twinges.

“You okay?” Ethan asks, and Sean can’t tell why it pisses him off so much.

“No, I don’t think I am,” he snaps. “I woke up in some strange place, and you two seem to know more than you’re letting on, the woods are dangerous but not as dangerous as setting up camp for some  _ fucking _ reason, there’s no fucking light and no fucking path and I just fucking twisted my ankle because you fucks won’t help me avoid all the roots and shite despite the fact that you obviously know how to find them, not to  _ fucking  _ mention--”

“Shhh…” Mark interrupts, holding up a hand and effectively cutting Sean off. He turns to Ethan. “Do you hear that?” he asks softly.

Ethan looks around, and in what sparse light there is, Sean can tell that Ethan looks scared. “There’s no moon tonight,” he repeats.

“We can avoid them,” Mark says, reaching out and grabbing Sean by the arm. Sean’s tempted to yank his arm away, but something about how the other two are acting stops him. He feels like he should be more afraid, but he’s used up all his fear and unease earlier, moved on to anger and frustration.

They make it a few more steps, and Sean can’t hear anything that would inspire fear and panic, but he can hear a babbling brook in the distance. He doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but it seems like he’s being led closer to the brook rather than away from it. He’s getting tempted to ask more questions,  _ what’s out here that has you so scared _ and  _ are we almost there _ when an arrow whizzes right by his ear. All three of them stop dead, and Sean thinks he’s figured out what they’re trying to escape from. That is, until Ethan calls out an unsteady, “Hello?” as if all danger has just dissipated. Sean starts to turn, to look behind him at where the arrow struck, but Mark stops him, grabs his head and physically stops Sean from looking.

A branch snaps somewhere in front of them, far enough that Sean can’t see even a vague shape, and it’s not very reassuring that whoever’s there hasn’t responded to Ethan’s call.

“What do we do?” Sean whispers. It feels like they should be running, but Mark doesn’t seem to think that Sean should see whatever got hit by the arrow, and they can’t keep going forward because of whoever shot the arrow in the first place.

“Just wait,” Ethan responds. “We don’t know who’s there, we don’t want them to think we’re a threat.” It’s not the answer Sean was hoping for, standing stock-still in the dark forest waiting for a mysterious archer to decide whether or not to put an arrow between his eyes.

“We don't mean any harm,” Mark calls out, and Sean thinks it sounds remarkably clichéd. “We're only looking for shelter.”

“Better get a move on then,” a strangely familiar voice calls from the darkness. “There's no moon tonight.” Sean looks at Mark and Ethan; they both seem to recognize the speaker, but they don't say anything about it. Mark takes Sean by the arm again and starts leading him forward. He’s being much more helpful about making sure Sean avoids trip hazards, which is appreciated now but would have been much more so had he had the assistance in the first place.

They get to the creek Sean had heard, and there's enough of a gap in the trees that he can see his friends’ faces. He can also see, a few feet ahead of them, the archer. Ethan's staring ahead at her, stiff and tense. Mark just looks tired. 

They keep walking along the creek until they reach a cliffside that Sean hadn’t even noticed. There’s a small waterfall coming down from the top. The archer climbs the rocks and disappears behind the waterfall. He’s not entirely sure that he’ll be able to climb, even if the entrance to the supposed cave isn’t actually that high up. His ankle is still throbbing dully, and it barely takes his weight so he can walk normally.

Ethan starts climbing up first, stopping after getting about a foot off the ground. “Come on, Jack,” he offers, holding out a hand. Mark nudges Sean forward, standing right behind him. He sets his left foot up first, searching for a relatively flat place to set it, and grabs the hand Ethan's holding out. As soon as he lifts his right foot, his ankle gives out. Mark grabs him around the waist and holds him steady. Mark and Ethan work together to get Sean stable before Ethan climbs a little higher. They continue in this fashion--Ethan climbing a little, then he and Mark helping Sean climb a little, Mark climbing a little behind--until Ethan finally makes it into the cave. He and the archer help pull Sean in.

There’s a bonfire on the opposite end of the cave, warming the cave and casting it with warm, flickering light. There’s a large chest against one wall, and the wall is covered in tick marks, like Sean’s seen in prison cells in movies and TV. If there’s a similar meaning, somebody was in this cave for something close to a year, maybe more. The archer had propped her quiver and bow against the wall opposite the tick marks, and is talking in hushed tones behind where Sean is looking around in wonder. Whatever this place is, and Sean’s starting to think that this is what Mark had referred to as “Central,” it looks like something straight out of a video game or a high fantasy movie. 

“What’s going on?” Sean demands, once he’s taken in his fill of his surroundings. He turns around and freezes. Mark’s talking to  _ Syd, _ of all people, while Ethan’s leaning against the wall looking guilty as all hell.

Syd seems to have been watching him carefully, even as she listens and nods along to what Mark is saying. “Come by the fire,” she says gently, moving away from the entrance and to the chest, digging through it for something. “I wanna look at your ankle. And I think we owe you an explanation.”

“We do,” Mark agrees, taking Sean by the shoulder and leading him to the fire. Sean hadn’t noticed it at first, but there’s a small hole in the wall that the smoke vents out of. Mark helps him sit down on the ground as Syd comes over, holding two small planks of wood and some cloth. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

Sean shakes his head. “You’re stalling,” he accuses through a hiss of pain as Syd pulls off his shoe. She gently removes his sock and starts prodding at his foot and ankle, and Sean has to fight not to draw his foot away from the touch. He knows that she’s helping, but it doesn’t change the fact that it hurts like a bitch.

“The climb probably made it worse,” she points out, probably to the room at large. “We’re here at least until he recovers enough to be able to come in and out on his own.”

“Where is  _ here _ ?” Sean demands. He could have guessed that the climb would make his ankle worse, but apparently there was some unspeakable horror in the woods that absolutely required that they bring Sean through pitch black woods and into a cave behind a waterfall in some kind of high fantasy video game world. He thinks they should be grateful he’s not losing his fucking shit again, but he’s just tired, at this point.

“The people we’ve met call this place Kirana,” Mark explains, sitting down next to Sean. “It’s…” He trails off, leaning his head back against the wall. “It’s beautiful here. Like Lord of the Rings, without the risk of the world ending. And I guess that’s why we were stuck here so long last time. We couldn’t figure out  _ why _ . It wasn’t like in Narnia, where four humans go to a magical world and saved the magical world from a great evil. We just ended up here, and we were stuck here until someone came to the nearby village and told us about a Soothsayer. We found her and she sent us home.”

“If there’s a nearby village,” Sean starts, gasping through pain as Syd adjusts his foot, “why did you drag me through the fucking woods?”

“Because when we say nearby, we mean a week’s walk away,” Syd explains, setting the planks of wood on either side of Sean’s ankle. “And trust me, you didn’t want to be travelling for a week without any food or weapons.” She starts wrapping his ankle up, then adds, “We were running low on food, and we didn’t have much of any other supplies. We needed to find something. So we picked a direction and just started walking. Some kind traders found us and gave us a ride to town.”

“We went back a few times,” Mark adds. “Whenever we needed new clothes, or weapons. Or blankets. There were a lot of things we didn’t know how to make. So we traded for them.”

“Who was we?” Sean asks.

“The three of us.” Mark gestures to himself, Syd, and Ethan. “And Amy. I can’t figure out why you came this time. And I guess we’ll figure out soon if Amy came too, or if whatever magic brought us here can only bring four.” He looks up at Ethan, still standing by the entrance. “You can feel free to chime in any time, you know.”

Ethan looks at them, and Sean doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel for him. Those unspoken horrors outside the cave must be making him feel trapped, in a small cave with his ex. Enough time has passed that they probably could stand to be in close proximity together under normal circumstances, if they were prepared for it and on their own terms, but this has to be stressful and it was certainly unplanned. And something about the way Ethan’s been avoiding looking at Syd that makes Sean wonder if this place had something to do with the breakup in the first place.

“I think I’m just going to go to sleep,” he says, sliding down the wall and into what can’t be too comfortable a position for sleeping.

“How long ago was all this?” Sean asks. Somehow, Mark and Syd’s explanation is leaving him with more questions than answers. “How did I not notice that you were all gone for so long? How did nobody notice? You all upload daily.”

“Narnia rules,” Syd says simply. She smiles up at him. She’s finished binding his ankle. “No time passes in our world, no matter how much time we spend here. We were home for about five months before now.”

“Four and a half,” Ethan interjects. His eyes are still closed, like he really is trying to sleep.

“Oh, you’ve got that burned into your brain, huh?” Syd asks, and it’s only a little scathing. “Couldn’t imagine why.”

“Oh, neither of you were traumatized?” Ethan opens his eyes and gets to his feet. “Your beds weren't too soft? You slept soundly through the night, as if we never had to sleep in shifts and keep watch? You all had an effortless transition back to the  _ ‘real world’ _ , and  _ I’m _ the odd one out?” He isn’t shouting, but Sean thinks he’d rather he was. “Well, good for you, but  _ I  _ have been counting the sleepless nights because it has been the  _ only _ thing keeping me from  _ losing my goddamn mind _ .”

“Well  _ maybe _ ,” Syd starts harshly, getting to her feet as well, “your  _ ‘transition’ _ would have been easier if you hadn’t  _ isolated  _ yourself. Me, Mark, and Amy are doing better than you because we  _ talk _ to each other instead of  _ pushing each other away _ .”

“Nobody ever offered any solutions!” Ethan countered. “It was always about how  _ weird _ it is to be back, always about hot showers and processed food and feeling out of place and never about how to readjust to any of it! None of us were sleeping, none of us were getting better. Your little support group didn’t keep you from tossing and turning any less than I was, so look me in the eye and tell me that I did this to myself. All three of you are living a fake it til you make it life but tell me, is that actually working out for you?”

If Sean had blinked, he may have missed it. Before he had any idea what was happening, Syd was on the other side of the cave, left hand clutching the front of Ethan’s shirt and right hand curled into a fist, punching Ethan in the face hard. “You’re lying to yourself to make yourself feel better,” she hisses into his face. Ethan’s eyes are wide. “The sooner you figure that out, the better it’ll be for all of us.”

She lets go of him, grabs her bow and arrows, and leaves. Mark tries to stop her, but she won’t listen. He sighs and stands up, going to the chest and drawing a fucking sword from it. “You’re an idiot,” he tells Ethan, “and if either of us get killed out there, it is your fault.” He leaves the cave too, presumably to chase after Syd and bring her back.

Ethan collapses to the ground, face hidden in his hands. Sean’s almost afraid to say anything to him, but the atmosphere is so tense that he almost can’t breathe. “I don’t know that I trust Mark with that sword, to be honest.”

He doesn’t know if the sound Ethan makes is a laugh or a sob.

* * *

Syd knows that going out was a bad idea, and she’s sure that somebody (Mark) is going to be stupid enough to follow her out, but she couldn’t stand to relive those last few weeks of her relationship with Ethan. It was always the same, arguing in circles around Ethan’s staunch refusal to talk about this place. It was like he’d managed to get it into his head that he could just go right back to normal like waking up from a bad dream, and he just ignored the fact that it just wasn’t working that way. And she had tried,  _ really _ tried, to avoid the long, drawn out arguments, but it just felt like everything she said was just another misstep until they were arguing about anything and everything.

She isn’t paying attention to where she’s going, but she doesn’t have to; she knows these woods better than her own apartment. She’s close to the daemon that she’d shot down earlier, not that she has anything to collect the venom with. She’s tempted to turn around, to start heading towards the clearing where the four of them used to build bonfires taller than they were in the summer, eating the sweets they’d bought at the village and relayed stories that the different traders and locals had told them.

She hears a branch snap behind her and she whips around, bow drawn and ready to fire.

“It’s just me.” It’s Mark, his old sword in his hand like he’s prepared for a fight. These woods on a moonless night, he has to be. “Are you okay?”

Syd shrugs, lowering her bow and stepping closer. “Haven’t run into anything yet. Still in one piece.”

Mark nods. “Good. That’s not what I meant, but that’s good, too.”

Syd sighs. “I can only talk to him if we’re pretending none of this ever happened. Which is fucking ridiculous, because almost half the time we were together, we were here, and he wants to just retcon that time from existence, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do with any of that.” There’s no anger anymore, no heat to it. She’s just tired. “Jack’s ankle’s gonna need a week, at least, and then we need to get him able to defend himself, and we need to make sure we can gather enough supplies for however long it’ll take to get to the Soothsayer.”

“We don’t even know that she’s still in the same place,” Mark points out. “We’ll have to ask at the village.” They turn together, heading back towards the cave. “Were all the arguments like that?” he asks softly.

Syd nods. “At the very end they were about normal things, but we always got there by the end of them.” Neither of them mention how Syd and Ethan’s relationship fell apart, while Mark and Amy’s just grew stronger. Neither of them need to. “And I tried. I tried to figure out ways to make the transition easier that didn’t involve clinging to the rest of us, but nothing ever worked. Everything I did only ever seemed to make it worse.”

Mark shakes his head fervently. “Don’t. Don’t do that to yourself. Maybe you won’t let Ethan take all of the blame, but don’t take all of it on yourself, either. It’s not your responsibility to make him better.”

“I know,” she says. “I do. I just. I don’t know.” They make it back to the waterfall, and Syd looks up at the top of the cliff where the runoff starts. “We should collect the venom off that daemon before the sun rises fully tomorrow. The apothecary always said he could always use more.” The sunrise always turns the daemons to dust. They only come out on nights like tonight, when there’s not even the light of the moon to see by. Sometimes, people get caught outside on these nights, attacked and infected by the monsters, and the apothecary doesn’t have enough of their venom to make antidotes to help all of them. He pays well for people who are brave (and stupid) enough to venture out, kill a daemon, and collect their venom for him. At least, he used to. “How much time do you think’s passed here?”

Mark shrugs. “There’s no way to tell until we go to that village.”

“If it’s even still there,” Syd reminds him. “If it’s been, like, a thousand years, then we could just be walking towards ruins.”

“That’s a risk we’ll have to take,” Mark says with a sigh. “We should go back inside.”

Syd nods and begins climbing. Ethan appears to have finally gone to sleep, not that she's entirely sure that he has. He’s curled up on his side and facing the wall though, so at the very least, he's looking to avoid another fight. Jack's right where they left him, sitting against the wall beside the dying fire. She and Mark must have been gone longer than she thought, for the fire to be that low. “How's the ankle?” she asks, sitting down beside him. It's warm enough, she thinks they can stand to let the fire die.

“I'd kill for a painkiller,” Jack said, and he's looking over at Ethan. Syd's trying to avoid looking that way, but Jack's all but confirmed what she'd suspected: he's not actually asleep yet. “But I think it'll be fine.”

She nods. “It should be.” She leans her head back against the wall, glancing sidelong at the Irishman. “And you're gonna miss caffeine way more than Tylenol soon, believe me.”

Jack's features shift into an exaggerated look of horror. “There's no coffee here?”

“Not that we could ever afford,” Mark says, sitting down in front of both of them. “Coffee is a luxury set aside for royalty. Occasionally a stall will appear in the marketplace selling enough for one cup for what has to equal a thousand dollars in our currency.”

“Our currency is different, you fuck,” Jack points out. Syd's glad his sense of humor has survived this far.

“There isn't really a currency here,” Syd explains, even though technically Jack didn't ask. “I mean, there's precious metals and stones, but there isn't a standard for them. We trade and we barter.”

“Amy got really good at identifying harmless berries, nuts, and plants,” Mark adds. “And there’s a lot of things that only grow in these woods. Not many people venture into them, so we can get good prices for rare foods. We can also trade pelts and leather.”

“And daemon venom. There are bad things on this forest. People will give anything for a sign that they've been killed.” Syd lets out a sigh. She really had thought they were done with this place. “But it would take months of gathering everything we could nonstop for enough coffee for half a cup.”

“Fucking elitist royals,” Sean grumbles. His stomach growls, or at least Syd assumes it's his stomach, and Syd feels bad for him. She has no idea how long the guys have been here, but she's reasonably certain they haven't been able to eat anything all day. There isn't any food here, and it's too dangerous to go out now. He's doing well though, not saying anything about how hungry he must be. Syd decides she'll bring some food back in the morning. He's earned that much, and it's not like he can get out of the cave and collect anything himself at the moment, even if he did know how.

And that...It's not ideal, this position Jack’s been put into. First of all, his ankle needs healing. It's not broken, and it might not even be sprained, but it'll hold him up unless he's used to ignoring ankle injuries the way that Syd is (running around and tripping over everything as a kid had really skewed her perception of “too injured” to keep running around). And as long as it’s holding him up, they can’t venture into town because he'll hold them up. Second, once Jack's ankle is healed, they have to teach him to….well, to survive. To assume that Jack already knows how to use a sword or how to shoot a bow and arrow would be absurd: maybe he knows a little but certainly not enough to hunt and defend himself. Those aren't exactly common skills back home anymore. Nobody needs to hunt to eat anymore, and nobody needs a whole ass sword to defend themselves. Syd won't be comfortable leaving with Jack until she knows that Jack can be armed and capable in the event he gets separated from the group, and she's sure Mark and Ethan feel the same.

Fuck, and then there's Ethan. They're going to have to talk--sit down and actually talk, like the pair of grown-ups that they are. And it's not that that Syd never tried, she always  _ tried _ , but it was like discussing important matters with a brick wall. He would always redirect the conversation to something mundane, something he deemed “safe” and “acceptable.” But if they don't sit down and talk, if they don't come to an agreement that can last at least until they make it home, then the group won't be able to stay together. Mark and Jack will finally be forced to pick sides in an argument that just keeps hanging over them like a dark cloud.

Syd isn't so naïve as to think that they'd choose her. They knew Ethan for years before she entered the picture. 

“You should get some rest, too.” Mark's looking at her, and sometimes Syd forgets that Mark can read people, really  _ read _ them, like he knows exactly what they're thinking at all times. Or maybe Syd just wears her heart on her sleeve.

“Probably,” she replies. She's not planning on sleeping yet, though. She needs to go out in a couple hours, and it’s too valuable to risk oversleeping. Her mind’s racing too much for her to be able to fall asleep, anyway. “So should you.”

Mark huffs a laugh. “We all should.” He moves over to the same corner that he had always slept in last time and lays down, and Syd feels like maybe he’s making some kind of point. Jack’s already curled up, facing the remains of their fire. She can’t tell if he’s actually asleep or if he’s just getting there, but she hopes he doesn’t have too hard a time drifting off. She knows from experience how hard the transition is, and she can’t imagine it’s easier when he’s the only one who’s completely out of his depth. Sleeping well won’t solve all of his problems, but it’ll do something to prevent a few of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanna reiterate that I promise Ethan isn't being an asshole for being an asshole's sake!
> 
> We're in the thick of it now! Let me know what you think!


	3. Let the Arrows Fly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof I meant to update this like a month ago whoops

When Sean wakes up the next morning, he’s only slightly less confused than he was the day before. And then it all comes crashing back. His back and neck are sore from sleeping on the rocky ground of the cave, and his stomach pangs with hunger. He’s almost forgotten that he hasn’t eaten since dinner the night before last. He pulls himself into a seated position and looks around. He’s alone except for Mark, who seems to be carving a new tick mark into the wall, across from the wall already covered in them.

“What’s the point of that?” Sean asks.

Mark stops and looks over at him. He shrugs. “There isn’t one,” he admits. “Not now that we know we aren’t missing anything. But that one,” he gestures to the other wall, “kept us sane. Like if we could track how much time we’d missed, we’d be slightly less lost when we got back.”

“Do you think it would’ve worked?” The logic doesn’t seem all that sound to Sean, but he wasn’t here for what looks like over a year with little hope for ever getting back and no idea how.

“Not at all,” Mark says, setting down the arrow he was carving with. “I mean, none of us really thought it would to begin with. It just gave us something to do.” He looks at the ground, a shimmer of light coming through the waterfall. “Syd should be coming back soon.”

“And Ethan?” Sean won’t say it out loud, but he’s worried. If Syd and Ethan’s argument last night wasn’t atypical of them, then they aren’t going to be able to survive this ordeal together. Sean doesn’t think they should split up, even if he’s the only one new to this place.

Mark shrugs. “I don’t know where he went, or why. I’ll probably go hunt him down when Syd gets back.” He pauses, glancing at Sean with an indecipherable look. “If that’s okay with you.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

Mark sighs. “I’m going to ask you something. And I just want you to answer me honestly. I promise I have a reason. Okay?”

Sean’s confused, but he suspects he might know where this is going. He nods in agreement.

“Did anything happen while she was staying in England with you?”

Sean groans, leaning his head against the wall. “No.” He looks at Mark without moving his head. “Have you been talking to PJ?”

“She seemed different,” Mark explains. He’s watching the entrance, like he’s making sure Syd doesn’t come in while they’re talking about her. “Brighter. Like she was before all this, almost. And so did you, for that matter.” He’s silent a moment, fidgeting with his hands. “Can I ask another question?”

Sean’s tempted to say no, move on from this. He gets enough from PJ, he doesn’t need it from Mark, too. Especially since Ethan’s stuck here with them. Instead, he says, “Sure.”

“Did you want something to happen?”

The denial gets caught in Sean’s throat. Because the truth is, he doesn’t know what _he_ wanted. He knows that PJ seemed to want something to happen, he knows that Brad and Emma _thought_ something was happening. He knows he hadn’t wanted her to leave. “I...I don’t know.” It feels weird to admit it.

Mark nods, but he doesn’t say anything because Syd’s climbing in, grinning ear to ear. “Six vials!” she declares triumphantly. “Six!” Sean doesn’t know what she got six vials of, but her excitement is contagious. He smiles back, and it becomes a little easier to ignore the emptiness of his stomach and the throbbing of his ankle.

She shrugs the bag she’s carrying off of her shoulder and opens it up, and Sean’s appetite almost disappears entirely. Inside is something wrapped in a bloodstained cloth, which Syd unwraps to reveal two skinned animals of some kind. They might be rabbits, not that Sean can tell _without their heads._ He manages, somehow, not to gag at the sight of it. “I also got breakfast!” And fuck, she looks so proud of herself for killing two innocent rodents, and Sean understands why she had to, he understands that it’s really the only way that they’d be able to eat, there isn’t an Asda or Tesco to run down to and buy some chicken or anything, but damn if it isn’t disgusting to see two dead animals just get pulled out of a bag.

“Why’d you skin them outside?” Mark asks, digging through the bag himself. He pulls out another cloth, one that isn’t covered in blood, and unwraps it to reveal a sizable pile of wildberries.

Syd shrugs. “I forgot how good the air feels here,” she says. “How good the sun feels. Didn’t wanna come back in here yet.” Sean thinks it might have something to do with her not realizing that Ethan had gone out, too. She grabs two stones of flint and kneels by the remains of the fire, getting a new one going faster than Sean would have thought possible. He supposes it comes down to practice, in the end.

Mark sighs and sets down the berries. “I don’t suppose you saw Ethan while you were out?” He seems to ignore the way that Syd stiffens, since Sean doubts that he missed it entirely.

“Didn’t even know he’d gone out,” she says stiffly. “But it’s a cloudless sky today, I’m sure he can take care of himself.”

“That’s not the main concern here,” Mark points out. He looks at Syd, concerned, but shakes his head as if clearing his thoughts. “I’m gonna go find him, see what he’s doing. We need to have a team meeting, anyway.”

“Breakfast will be ready when you get back, I’m sure,” Syd replies, intent with what she’s doing at the fire. Sean’s pretty sure she’s cooking the maybe-rabbits, but he’s doing his best to not pay attention. The smell of cooking meat is making his mouth water though, despite how he felt at the sight of the dead animals.

Mark looks like he wants to say something, but he just gives Sean a look that means _something_ , even if the Irishman doesn’t know what, and leaves.

“You should probably unwrap your ankle,” Syd says softly. “Let it breathe. I doubt you’re planning on moving too much, anyway.”

“Not like there’s anywhere to go,” Sean points out, reaching out to reach the bindings without shifting his leg too much. “Not exactly looking to climb down for anything, and the cave’s only so big.”

It’s weird, a twisted version of small talk that the two never really used anyway. It was always a greeting and a quick catch-up, but even then, the answer to _how are you_ always included an explanation attached. Sean doesn’t know what to do with this kind of conversation; it burns out too quickly.

“I’m sorry,” Syd says suddenly, and she sounds so sincere, like she actually thinks that whatever this is, it’s entirely her fault.

“For...what?” Sean asks. He doesn’t know how to tell her that she can’t possibly be responsible for this, considering he still isn’t sure what _this_ is.

“That you’re stuck here. That I didn’t think to have food ready when whoever else showed up.” She’s silent another moment, messing with the meat on the fire. “That you’re caught up in mine and Ethan’s drama.” Sean doesn’t know how to tell her that it’s entirely possible that he may have placed himself in that last position himself.

“You shouldn’t apologize for things you aren’t responsible for,” he says instead. “Unless you’ve got magic powers and brought us all here yourself, you’re just as much a victim as I am. And you couldn’t have known how many of us were coming, or how far out we ended up. There’s no point in making food for someone who might not even show up for three more days.” Although, if they had been three days out, Sean’s not sure he’d have made it here at all.

“No counter for that last one though,” Syd says wryly. “I got here pretty well before sundown last night. I could have at least gathered the berries last night. If nobody joined me, I could have eaten them myself.” She looks up at him and smiles, a self-deprecating one that doesn’t even come close to her eyes. Sean doesn’t think he’s ever seen her look so despondent. Even directly following the break-up, she didn’t look so hopeless as she does now. “How are you doing, though? Really?”

There it is, the _how are you_ that’s always more sincere than it ought to be. He just doesn’t know what the answer is. Confused, scared, unsure, worried...a lot of negativity swirling around his head that makes his whole _positive mental attitude_ difficult to maintain. But he doesn’t want her to know that he’s not doing very well at all, because he doesn’t want the three of them to think that they need to worry about him. Everybody seems so stressed and worried about each other and themselves that if Sean lets slip that he’s one more shock away from falling apart, he’s worried they might all self-destruct with the added concerns. 

“Better than expected,” he says vaguely, and he supposes it may not even be a lie. He’s still breathing, not having panic attacks and not paralyzed by fear. The only thing physically wrong is that his ankle is still sore, and that’ll heal soon enough. Syd shoots him a look like she doesn’t believe him, but she doesn’t call him on it. Maybe she figures there’s truth to the saying ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ and is just planning on letting him be until he adapts like the others.

Mark and Ethan return, Ethan looking like a petulant child who would rather be anywhere else. Syd removes the meat from the fire and lays it out on a smooth stone that Mark hands her. Sean really feels like he’s in some sort of movie, some Lord of the Rings inspired garbage that he would only half pay attention to.

“Mark said something about a plan?” Ethan says. He sounds disattached, like he doesn’t care one way or another. If there is a plan, it’s news to Sean, and probably something that Mark and Syd came up with last night when they were out of the cave. 

“Sure,” Syd agreed, pulling the cloth of berries closer to the center of the group. “We need one.” Ethan scoffs. Syd closes her eyes and breathes deeply through her nose.

“What?” Ethan demands, like he doesn’t see what the problem is. “We go to the village, we ask about where the Soothsayer is these days, we go to the Soothsayer. What more do you want?”

“Well, for starters,” Mark says, calm as ever. Sean can see by the set of his jaw and shoulders, though, that he’s not that far from following in Syd’s footsteps and punching Ethan himself. “We don’t know how much time has passed here. We don’t know if the village is still standing, or even if the Soothsayer is still around.”

“Not to mention we need to teach Jack to defend himself,” Syd adds, and _that’s_ news to Sean. He supposes it makes sense, though, that they don’t just want to be acting as his bodyguards or something. From the sounds of it, the four of them last time were a team, so Sean needs to be capable of joining that team himself.

Sean thinks, for just a second, that Ethan’s about to consider splitting up; that two of them go into town and one of them stays with him in the cave. Sean does not want that, if only because he feels like there is no way to split them up where they all win. If Mark stays behind, then that leaves Syd and Ethan going off by themselves, and Sean’s pretty sure that Syd would kill Ethan if Ethan can’t get his shit together. If Mark goes with Ethan, Mark might be able to talk some sense into the younger man, but that leaves Sean alone with Syd. Even if Sean were able to sort out his feelings, now is probably the _worst_ time to do anything with them. And if Syd goes with Mark, that leaves Sean alone with Ethan and his possibly-romantic feelings for Ethan's ex. Also, Ethan's being a real fucking ass right now and Sean can't be sure that Ethan wouldn't take it out on him, possibly-romantic feelings for his ex notwithstanding. 

Thankfully, Ethan doesn't suggest splitting up. He doesn't really suggest anything at all, just waves his hand in a _go on_ gesture.

"So what's the backup plan if the village isn't there?" Sean asks, when nobody else seems to be planning on breaking the tense silence. For lack of anything better to do, he takes a chunk of the mysterious rodent Syd cooked up. It tastes gamey, and he can't really say he's a fan.

"There are other villages," Mark says slowly, like he's trying to work out the plan as he goes. "I think I can vaguely remember which direction we went after the Soothsayer last time, but that was a one time, one way trip. The best thing to do would be to go in that direction until we find somebody to tell us whether it's the right way or not."

It sounds less like a plan and more like guesswork, but that is what Syd had said they did last time, when they first found the village at all.

He can tell Ethan has some sort of cutting response he wants to make, but the younger man seems to realize that he's about one wrong word from getting punched again, possibly by more than one person. So instead, he just says, “And what if nobody finds us?”

Syd shrugs. “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it, won’t we?”

“Or we could cross it like normal people,” Sean points out, because he doesn’t like the idea of fucking up when it could cost them the way home. “That is always an option.”

“But where’s the fun in that?” Syd pouts. The atmosphere in the cave gets infinitesimally lighter, for just a moment. But then Syd sobers up, and says, “We’ll find a way home. Whatever it takes.”

Nobody looks over at the wall with all the tick marks on it, like none of them want to consider that _what_ it takes isn’t the only thing to consider.

* * *

The first time Jack leaves the cave is on day six. He’s been hobbling around the small space until he’s walking almost normal, so Mark and Syd help him climb down the slippery rocks that jut out from the cliff-face. He stumbles once, but Syd hadn’t expected him to make it down without any incidents whatsoever, even if his ankle hadn’t gotten twisted on the trip in. 

“Looks a little less scary, in the daytime,” Jack points out, and Syd huffs a laugh.

“Lack of monsters will do that,” she points out. She adjusts her quiver of arrows where it hangs over her shoulder, for lack of anything better to do. “So. Where do you wanna start?”

Jack shifts some more weight to his injured ankle, and she sees him wince, but not as bad as a week ago. “Maybe we should save sword-fighting for another day,” he decides. Syd doesn’t say, but she thinks they should avoid walking too much, too, so that really just leaves archery. It’s up to Jack, though. If he wants to learn to navigate these woods, how to identify plants that are safe for human consumption and those that aren’t, then that’s his choice. “Always wanted to learn to shoot a bow and arrow anyways,” Jack adds.

Syd grins up at him. “Excellent! Wait here!” She turns and climbs back into the cave to grab another bow. Back on the ground, Mark and Jack are having a silent conversation. They’ve been doing that a lot, like an ongoing conversation that Syd keeps interrupting. She couldn’t say what that conversation is about, but it’s definitely happening. 

She hands Jack the spare bow (it was Amy’s, when she was here), and says, “We’re gonna have to walk a bit to get to the clearing. Think you can make it?”

“Probably,” Jack says, and he’s already being frustratingly vague about his injuries and limits regarding them. He’ll fit in fine, then. “Lead the way.”

The woods don’t have footpaths or clear trails anywhere, which makes navigating tricky and walking dangerous (as evidenced by the fact that Jack’s got an injured ankle). So Syd keeps an eye on him, makes sure he doesn't trip over tree roots or overgrown shrubs, as well as making sure he doesn't cut himself on anything poisonous. These woods can be deadly.

They get to the clearing, and Syd has to look away from Jack, the way his face lights up when he sees the sky for the first time in almost a week. The sunlight slants from the way they came, dappled on his face between remnants of shadows from the trees.

Syd left Brighton feeling like the whole trip had been a mistake. She hadn't been looking to kickstart a new relationship, especially not with one of Ethan's friends. And, while it’s true that nothing actually happened with Jack, it certainly didn’t feel like an honest statement to say that something _didn’t_ happen, either. They parted ways with something thick and difficult to navigate hanging between them. Not romantically entangled, but not strictly platonic. Schrodinger's relationship. 

Which wouldn’t be too bad, except Syd’s pretty sure that Mark and, worse, Ethan can pick up on it. Ethan’s been avoiding all three of them, which isn’t exactly a great idea but probably for the best, and not even because of whatever weird atmosphere floats between Syd and Jack. Anytime they try to have a conversation about plans and figuring out where to go next, what to do if there’s no village or no Soothsayer, Ethan lashes out, and Syd’s constantly half a second away from punching him again. She doesn’t need to keep punching anything, considering that she’s the most proficient with a bow, and she can’t very well use one if she breaks her hand. Mark also always looks like he’d be right behind Syd in punching Ethan, so leaving him to work through this alone is really the only option. But damn, if it doesn’t make Syd feel like the shittiest person in the world.

“Ankle still good?” Syd asks, trying to get off that train of thought before it leads somewhere dangerous (more dangerous than it’s already gone).

“Be in trouble if it weren’t,” Jack responds, which tells her that it’s not great but not bad enough that he finds it debilitating. 

Syd accepts the answer with a shrug. “Alright. So, first thing’s first.” She shrugs the quiver off of her shoulder and digs, finding the spare arm guard she always kept there in case the one she usually wore got damaged. She hands it to him. “It goes on the arm that holds the bow steady.”

Jack takes it and clumsily puts it on his left forearm. “Don’t think Legolas had one o’ these,” he mutters, causing Syd to snort a laugh.

“Pretty sure elves are natural born archers, so they’ve probably got really tough skin on their forearms that prevents the bowstring from ripping the skin to shreds,” she replies, even though she’s kind of talking out of her ass on that. “We, however, are mere mortal humans, and the skin’s really sensitive on that part of your arm.”

“I am an _Irishman_ ,” Jack counters. “We’ve got a constitution you can’t beat!”

“I’m sixty percent Scandinavian and twenty percent Irish,” Syd says, just to be contradictory. “And I think the Celts favored swords over bows, anyway.” She hands him an arrow. “So. Shoot…” She points across the clearing. “That tree.”

“What, just like that?” Jack asks. She can tell he didn’t expect to just…get into it like that.

Syd shrugs. “Sure. We’ll work on form and technique after I laugh at how bad you are.” Actually, more like _after I see what you’ve got wrong and what you’ve got right_ , but the slight inclination towards being an asshole is more organic, more like what she’d be like if they were on an archery range for no reason but to have fun. She raises her voice, shouts, “CLEAR!” just in case Mark or Ethan are on the other side of the clearing for any reason. The last thing she needs is for Jack to miss the tree entirely and shoot one of them in the leg, or something.

Jack’s form isn’t too bad; he clearly watches a lot of movies with archers and so has a reasonable idea on how he should stand. His aim sucks, and he doesn’t pull the string back nearly far enough, so the arrow barely makes it halfway across the clearing. It’s pretty underwhelming.

“That…wasn’t that bad,” Syd tells him encouragingly. “Your form was actually pretty close.” She wants to start with one correction at a time. “Let’s fix that first, ‘kay?”

She steps up close behind him, and valiantly ignores the fact that he very clearly has not bathed in the past week. Okay, so after this, they’re getting him to the creek. Fuck.

She has him raise the bow again, without the arrow this time, so she can adjust his stance bit by bit until it’s exactly where it needs to be. She’s close, practically plastered behind him. “And then you pull the string back, as far as you can.”

There’s a scuffle behind the tree line, and Syd steps back and has her own bow drawn before Jack even has the chance to react to it.

“Who’s there?” she calls out, and Ethan steps into the clearing with his hands up.

“Just me,” he says, looking down at the ground. Syd lowers her bow, puts the arrow back in her quiver.

“Sorry,” she says, after a tense moment.

“Can’t be too careful,” Ethan says with a shrug, and it feels like a truce. “Mark said Jack’s training started today, so. Wanted to see how that was going.”

“She didn’t laugh when the arrow only went three feet,” Jack says, and Syd can tell he’s trying to ease the tension by studiously ignoring it. “So I’d say pretty well.”

“We fixed his form,” Syd explains, a little bit more specific so that Ethan knows where they stand. It’s not that she thinks he’s more desperate to get home than the rest of them, but she knows that he’s coping the worst. Worse even than Jack, who’s taken this all in stride after that first night. Jack might actually be taking this better than any of them did on their first time, but that might be because he’s got the three of them, who do know what they’re doing here now.

She pulls another arrow out of the quiver and hands it to Jack. “Try again.”

Jack’s form is much better this time, but his aim is still off and he still doesn’t pull the string back far enough. Both of those problems can be fixed with practice.

Ethan nods, but he doesn’t seem satisfied. Syd doesn’t think he ever will be, so long as they’re here and not actively moving towards the Soothsayer.

Syd just wants to go back to the way things were before Kirana, the first time.

But they can’t; too much has changed between them, the air constantly charged with tension born from something beyond their control. Syd had blamed Ethan for everything in the early days: blamed his obstinance, blamed his desperation to pretend, blamed his delusions. But that was how he was coping, and she felt like the single worst person in the world—in _both_ worlds—for blaming him for trying to handle this in the only way he felt he could. This whole thing is bigger than they are, and the fact that they’re back tells her that there’s something that they _missed_.

“I’ll uh, I’ll leave you to it, then,” Ethan says, a bit awkward, and for a moment Syd thinks that she might be able to get him to _talk_. But she lets that moment go, lets him turn and walk back into the trees.

They have to talk. They do. Syd knows that they need to, to sit down and have an honest to God conversation where they act like fucking adults, and they have to do it before they actually leave for the village because they can’t _avoid each other_ once they leave the woods. Not without splitting up, and that’s not an option.

But for now, Syd’s going to train Jack to use a bow and arrow, because even with whatever it is that’s hanging between them, being alone with Jack is far less daunting than being alone with Ethan.

* * *

Sean maybe should have said sword. He’s pretty sure that would have put him alone with Mark, who’s entirely too observant for Sean’s liking at the moment, but at least it wouldn’t have put him alone with Syd, plastered along his back and talking softly in his ear as she adjusts his shoulders and helps him pull the bowstring back all the way to his cheek. It’s far too intimate for him to pretend that he feels anything other than strictly platonic feelings.

And then Ethan showed up, and that was probably the most awkward encounter of Sean’s entire fucking life. Because Sean knows, he _knows_ , that Ethan saw the way that they were stood entirely too close together. What’s Sean supposed to say? _‘Hey I’ve got a crush on your ex, I hope we can still be friends, everything will be great!’_ He knows something closer to the full story, this time, knows that the two of them fell apart after they were here the first time because they both coped with what had happened differently, but that doesn’t make any of his earlier reservations about starting something with Syd _go away_.

Syd has him return to form again, and makes him hold it while she makes minor adjustments. His left arm starts to shake, unused to being held up and out the way that it is now. Sean feels like that’s pretty counterproductive to aiming, but Syd doesn’t say anything about it. What she does is hand him another arrow, shows him the best way to nock it so that it’s easiest to aim, takes a grip of his left bicep so his arm isn’t so shaky. Tells him to breathe, and when to let the arrow fly.

It goes about three quarters of the way across the clearing, and it looks like it would have been about a couple feet wide if it had made it that far. Sean refuses to concede that it’s probably got something to do with the way Syd’s hand on his arm is making him flustered. It wouldn’t help anything.

“That’s a lot better!” Syd says, giving him a wide grin and stepping back. Sean doesn’t respond, but he hopes the look he gives her conveys his disbelief. “No, really,” she insists. “It went a lot further!”

“I suppose,” Sean allows, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “Aim’s still shite, though.”

Syd shrugs. “You’ll get it. And,” she leans in closer, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial stage whisper, “Mark’s way worse.”

“That’s not true!”

Sean and Syd both turn to find Mark leaning up against one of the trees behind them. He’s eyeing Sean like he thinks there’s something more happening than archery lessons (which, to be fair, Sean isn’t even sure he could argue that point without feeling like he’s lying anymore), but he doesn’t voice whatever it is he thinks he sees. What he does say is: “I’m only a little bit worse. And I’d have at least hit _a_ tree.”

“Oh, look at that,” Sean mutters teasingly. Then, putting on his very best impression of Mark, which is a truly terrible Warfstache impression at its heart, he adds, “I’m Markiplier and I’ve got such big biceps I can shoot an arrow for _miles_!”

Syd giggles, and Mark has a look of (mostly) mock indignation. “I didn’t say miles!” Mark argues. “The clearing’s only, like a hundred feet. Syd’s the one that can shoot an arrow for miles, make fun of her!”

“It wasn’t _miles_ ,” Syd says. “It probably just got lost in the grass, and at any rate, it was _once_.”

Sean turns to Syd, and it occurs to him that it’s a little strange that she hadn’t demonstrated for him before asking him to shoot the first arrow, or afterwards. She’s been arranging and rearranging him like some fancy mannequin, but he hasn’t actually seen her shoot anything.

“I’m not making fun of her ‘cause she ain’t a showoff,” Sean says, wrapping an arm around Syd’s shoulders in a purely friendly gesture. “‘At least I’d hit a tree,’ _honestly_.”

“I don’t need to brag or show off,” Syd says, and Sean can hear the grin. “He already knows how great I am.”

Sean’s heart stutters, because it almost sounds like she _knows_ , knows he’s got a crush, knows what he’s been thinking, knows what he and Mark talk about in hushed tones when she leaves, and then he _remembers_ . Remembers that, a week ago, when it was so dark that he could barely see Mark and Ethan, a moonless night in the dark woods, an arrow that missed him so narrowly and hit the monster that must have been right behind him. That was _Syd_. Even in the dark, she’s got the kind of aim that Sean will never be able to compete with.

Mark scoffs. “Yeah, okay, don’t let it inflate your ego or anything.”

Sean feels Syd shrug. “Gotta compete with you somehow.” She ducks out from under Sean’s arm, and he tries not to pout. “Got that massive ego to match your massive head.”

“Okay, _ow_ ,” Mark says, putting on an overexaggerated expression of hurt. “Anyway, I just came by to check on progress.”

“It’s being made!” Syd says cheerfully. “So we’re doing great!”

Mark doesn’t leave them to it, choosing instead to watch them for a while. After about five tries, Sean gets an arrow to the other side of the clearing, but it hits the ground just before it hits the tree he’s been aiming for. A few more arrows and they start to hit the tree but bounce harmlessly off of it. Sean doesn’t start whining, nor does he accuse Syd of setting him up for failure, because he’s sure that it’s possible for someone that isn’t him to get an arrow embedded into the tree. It does, however, feel like he’s not going to be able to do it.

On one occasion, the arrow whizzes past the tree and disappears into the forest. Syd pats his shoulder, which is sore from the effort and strain he’s been putting on it. “Call it a day?” she suggests.

Sean wants to argue, wants to stay until he _gets it_ , but he’s getting so tired. And he’s hungry. He gets why there isn’t a lot of food here, gets that they have to hunt and scavenge for each meal, but _fuck_ if he doesn’t hate every second of it. So he just nods at her, hands her the bow back. He makes to step forward, to start collecting all the arrows, but Syd holds him back.

“I’ve got it,” she tells him. “Just go with Mark.”

Mark, who’s still watching, and has probably been cataloguing Sean’s every reaction to every time he and Syd make some kind of physical contact. Sean does not want to just go with Mark, because Mark is going to want to talk about Sean’s feelings.

Sean does not want to talk about his feelings.

He doesn’t seem to have a choice, though, because Mark just grabs him by the arm and starts leading him through the trees, away from the clearing and closer to the sound of the rushing water. “You have not showered in a week and you smell,” Mark says, matter-of-factly. “I’m sure the reason Syd didn’t say anything to you is because she’s very nice and doesn’t like telling people that they smell like something rotting, but I swear to God, you’d smell better if you’d been dead a week in the desert.”

Sean knows he smells bad, but he thinks Mark’s overselling it a bit. He doesn’t say anything, though, because. Yeah. He needs a shower. Not that there’s any shower nearby, but he’s smart enough to put two and two together and guess that Mark’s gonna throw him into the river until he smells a bit better.

“Don’t we get the water from that river?” he points out, because he’s gotta be contrary _somehow_.

“We get our drinking water further upstream,” Mark explains. “Right at the base of the falls. How’s your ankle, by the way?”

Sean shrugs, hoping that he’s doing a good job of downplaying the way that it’s been throbbing incessantly since about right after he and Syd started walking towards the clearing. It does not seem to appreciate the uneven terrain or the constant weight being put on it, but he supposes that it could be much worse. He’s pretty sure that he’ll probably be fine, because if not then they’ll all be fucked. “‘S alright,” he says, noncommittally.

Mark eyes him critically, and sighs. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and Sean knows he doesn’t believe him in the slightest. He doesn’t really think Syd did, either. “Are you at least good enough to stand in the creek long enough to get somewhat clean?”

Sean shrugs again. “Probably. You gonna rescue me if I can’t?” He flutters his eyelashes, putting on his best _innocent princess_ look. He’s pretty sure it conflicts wildly with his beard.

“Absolutely not,” Mark says, but Sean can tell he’s joking. “I’m gonna let you drown.”

When they get to the creek, Sean feels only a little awkward stripping down to the thin shorts that act as a fair substitute for boxers. He’s pretty sure the others (at least Mark and Ethan; he refuses to think about Syd) are going commando, but Sean’s been wearing shorts under his pants to try and cling to some sense of normalcy here. He wades into the center of the creek, and even at its deepest point it only comes up to about his hips. The current’s stronger than he’d expected, but not so strong that it’ll sweep him away.

When Sean asks what passes for soap here, Mark just lobs something resembling a pinecone at him. It lands in the water, so Mark probably wasn’t actually trying to hit him, and it floats away as Sean scowls at him. “Alright, I get it. Jesus.”

Even without soap, the bath helps a lot. Sean feels the grime and sweat and grossness wash away, and he crouches down so he can submerge his head to get his hair wet. When he resurfaces, he sees that Ethan has joined Mark, and is holding a change of clothes.

“How’s it going?” Ethan asks him, and it’s almost friendly.

“Great! I feel like a real boy again!”

“He declined the pinecone,” Mark says. “But at least we got him in the water.”

Sean scowls. “Fuck off,” he shouts. “I haven’t been able to leave the cave because the two of you couldn’t be arsed to help keep me from tripping when we first arrived!” He hadn’t meant for it to sound quite so much like he was guilt tripping them, but there wasn’t much to be done for that.

“We apologized!”

Sean debates whether or not to mention that while it’s true that Mark apologized, Ethan did not. Ethan hasn’t said much of anything at all. He decides not to say anything that could start an actual argument.

“I’m just sayin’, ain’t my fault I haven’t bathed in a week.” He doesn’t think he smells much better now than he did at the outset, since there isn’t soap and there also isn’t any deodorant, but at least he doesn’t smell so _strongly_ , and he feels cleaner. It’s an obvious improvement.

When he feels as clean as he knows he’s going to get, he hauls himself back onto the riverbank, trying not to wince when his ankle twinges. He can tell by the twin looks of concern on Mark and Ethan’s faces that he doesn’t do a very good job.

He gets dressed as quickly as possible, holding himself steady on a nearby tree as he pulls on the pants Ethan had brought. He feels like an extra in Lord of the Rings in these clothes, or maybe a cheaper ripoff, wearing a costume that isn’t meant to be looked at too closely. It fits the general theme, but only at a glance.

They’re shitty clothes, with the pants already wearing out at the knee and a hole in the shirt, under the right armpit.

Mark and Ethan help support his weight on the trek back to the cave, and Sean wants to try to say that it isn’t necessary but he needs to accept that it kind of is. He’s gone from occasionally pacing around the cave out of boredom but mostly staying off his feet to a whole day putting weight on his ankle. It’s starting to hurt like a motherfucker. He’s not looking forward to climbing back up.

Syd’s got a fire going, and the smell of something cooking is filling the space. Sean needs a little bit of help from Mark to get up inside, but he thinks that’s less the ankle and more the lack of upper body strength. He’s even able to walk himself over to the opposite wall, where he usually sits.

“So. How’d it go?” Syd asks, poking at whatever it is that’s over the fire. Sean thinks it looks vaguely birdlike, and there is a pile of feathers on top of the chest.

“Great,” Sean mumbles, settling against the wall. It’s actually starting to feel comfortable, sitting on a stone ground and leaning against the uneven stone wall. He thinks it’s some kind of form of Stockholm Syndrome. “I feel like a human again.”

“You smell like one, too,” Syd offers, grinning up at him. Sean makes a face at her and flips her off. 

Sean starts to drift off to the sound of Syd and Mark talking, catching Ethan up on how the archery lesson went. The gist of it is that he did pretty well, will probably be reasonably okay at it after another couple lessons. He doesn’t feel up to another couple of lessons just now, sore and achy from holding his arms up for longer than he normally does.

He wants to learn swords. He’ll be even more sore and achy, he knows, and it probably involves a few hours alone with Mark, but knowing how to swordfight would be an awesome skill to have.

After some more conversation that Sean hears but doesn’t register, there’s a hand gently shaking his shoulder. Syd’s watching him with a soft smile that makes his heart stutter. “Food’s ready. Then we’ll let you sleep.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come bug me over on tumblr! URL is pyromanicschizophrenic!


End file.
